ould be multiplied readily from what to the casual student seem
to be dry annual reports. In reality these same reports pulsate with
life. But it is often only found between the lines by the reader who
knows the history of the land.

Nearly midway in that last decade of the last century the golden Yukon
swung out of solitude into the vision of the world and there as
elsewhere in the vast north-land the Mounted Police were to play a large
and brilliantly useful part. To some study of that part we shall come in
succeeding pages.

CHAPTER XI

IN THE GOLD COUNTRY

Away on the banks of the Red River hard by where the City of Winnipeg
with its aggressive business marts and its surging polyglot population
now stands, there is the old Kildonan Church, which the original Selkirk
Settlers, pioneers of the West, built for themselves and their children.
These early colonists, unmindful of worldly gain, had the traditional
hospitality of the Highland race to which they belonged, and the
proverbial absence of class distinction which always obtains on a
frontier:

"No bolts had they to their doors
Nor bars to their windows,
But their houses were open as day
And the hearts of the owners."

It was natural that to such a place should come on frequent visits the
Hudson's Bay men, the explorers and pathfinders, most of whom were of
the same race and creed as the pioneers. And it was natural too, that
when these pathfinders came to the end of the long trail their bodies
should be brought back to rest in the God's acre around that old church,
the famous cemetery where

"Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep."

There were other lines of Gray's immortal poem that could be applied
with great appropriateness to that churchyard that lay in the midst of a
settlement in which were men of undoubted talent and power had their lot
been cast in other surroundings. Such lines, for instance, as these:

"Some village Hampden, who, with dauntless breast,
The little tyrant of his fields withstood:
Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest:
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood."

But there are many resting there who became known far beyond their early
circle. Most of them are not connected with our present story, but one
monument in that ancient churchyard bears the name of a man whose record
shines out with splendour in the history of t